How
I Left the Convent

St. Joseph's High
School, South Bend, Indiana, 1965-66

Another year, another
transfer--to South Bend this time, where Sr. Robertina was the principal
at St. Joseph's Convent there. She was an efficiency expert, a mathematician.
Her narrowness made me feel limited. Certain people are expanders, others
are contractors. I was an expander caught in the trap of a contractor.
I was assigned to the English department at St. Joseph's High School, and
since there were Holy Cross Brothers teaching there as well, we had some
mixed company at department meetings for a change. I remember little about
that year except turning students on to J. D. Salinger, keeping a journal,
continuing the language group at Loyola, talking with Fr. Tranel afterward,
and going to the University of Chicago library on Saturdays to do research.
I felt enclosed, cut off. I was into psychology which turned me inward,
not art which turned me outward. There was no milieu of creative students
at St. Joseph's as there had been at Noll, Schlarman and Woodstock. I began
to read Eric Fromm and whatever I could about growth in extremely difficult
conditions such as concentration camps. I gradually discovered that I wanted
to be my own person, and not be subject to superiors and principals' whims.
I wanted to be free. I wanted to be able to grow as I had been reading about
in the psychology books. I felt like a prisoner in a concentration camp,
like a desert plant which has to go very deep to reach a taproot, like a
distorted being.

The
Summer of my discontent: 1966

The summer of 1966
weas the worst of my life. After that year with Sr. Robertina, I was struggling
to hang on to my frayed vocation. This was the mid 60's; my inner turmoil
was reflected in social turmoil. Change was everywhere. Old values were
being overturned. Everyone was caught up in experimentation, searching for
self-understanding, freedom, honesty about our feelings. Catcher in the
Rye embodied that time. I was part of that movement. None of us wanted to
be phony. But nuns were not encouraged to examine their feelings; self-understanding
was not something we sought during particular examen each night. Wearing
a habit was essentially hiding behind a defensive mask, but we didn't see
that then. However, under Fr. Curran's breaking through my defenses, Carl
Rogers' teaching, Fr. Tranel's listening, I had begun endlessly rending my
clothing, searching my state of mind, revealing my anxieties, my fears,
my limitations.

How
I saw myself confined, in prison, in a drought.

We were all reading
psychology books then. I was distraught over what I saw in myself when
I turned to these books for an explanation of what was wrong with me--books
about people suffering total deprivation in concentration camps, books
about what total loss of freedom does to individuals, books about animals
traumatized by confinement and repetitive prodding. I wanted to know how
to stay alive in a dessicated world. I studied the plants. I read Luther
Burbank's Harvest of the Years, about plants' adaptation to harsh environments,
about their managing to find an underground source of water to survive
a drought. Wasn't he describing me? I had been in a drought off and on
since St. Mary's, and especially during that semester at Schlarman when
Fr. Kelley tied me down and forbid me to have any after school contact
with the students. My journals from this time show me struggling to feel
like an adult, to feel independent. Could I even stand on my own two feet
without a superior, since I hadn't done it for 14 years? My old rebellion
against my mother returned, transferred now to the superiors (first Marie
Jeanne and now Robertina!) I felt narrowed, confined, blocked, perpetually
adolescent. I wanted to break out, to expand, to see whether I could make
it in the adult world. I wanted to respect myself, to be appreciated,
to have some meaning and purpose in life. I wanted some work that was
worthy of me, some project I could invest myself in that would give me
an adult role.

I always expand
when I love, but I was also having trouble finding someone or something
to love, since my delight in the students and in my projects had been
thwarted. Whom was I to love? What was I to love? My feelings were all
turning out to be negative-- sorrow, fear, anger, loss. Psychology, my
new enthusiasm, instead of expanding me as art did, contracted and turned
me inward. How could I identify with negativity? "The normal exercise
of any human power results in felt gratification, whereas excessive activity
or excessive restraint results in unpleasant experience," I copied
from one of my books. I definitely suffered not from excessive activity
but from excessive restraint. I tried to learn about emotions from books.
"Anger-- a negative emotion which stems from blocked or inadequate
participation." That sounded like me-inadequate participation in
the full life. Was I angry? "I feel anger when a distasteful burden
is put upon me or when I am slighted or insulted," I wrote. Still,
anger produced energy. I had a lot of negative energy. Why was I angry?
Because I was frustrated?

Enough about negative emotions. I read about the expanding emotions --enthusiasm,
joy, hope, love, pleasure, laughter. Enthusiasm appealed to me, but I
needed a cause. Where was it to be found? Joy--"Heightened contentment
at the attainment of some desired object." But I had lost all my
desired objects. I sought the consolations of philosophy. I reread Aristotle's
Ethics, looking for the positive emotions, copying passages that applied
to me: "In order for a man to be delighted, there is no need to realize
all that he desires; for he delights in the realization of each object
of his concupiscence." If I had only one object in which I delighted!
Was I crippled emotionally? Had I chosen to live with other emotional
cripples because I was crippled? Was I so emotionally insecure that I
would only feel comfortable in the convent? I was torturing myself, supposing
myself inadequate: "Maybe I chose a place where I wouldn't suffer
too much ego damage because here they're all cripples too. In the world
I often feel rejected where here I can feel superior. If people are nice
to me sometimes, I think they feel sorry for me. I feel like I've horned
in and intruded, and they're just being nice to me."

How
I began stripping off the layers of my personality

The Sixties were
concerned with stripping off the masks and hypocrisies to reveal who we
really are. "Who am I?" I was stripping off whatever I was hiding
behind. I noticed what kind of a person I was becoming--a mothering person,
someone who wanted to take over another person, make him dependent on
me, make his decisions for him, tell him what was wrong with him. (My
usual diagnosis was that he didn't know how or wasn't able to let himself
go and enjoy himself, that he was too duty bound. I might have been describing
my own problem.) I had been crippled myself by these mothering women and
now I was turning into a smothering/controlling woman myself in my relationships
with students. My need for independence had been warped and frustrated
into helplessness; I needed someone more needy, dependent and helpless
than myself to feel independent. Instead of seeing others as independent;
I saw them as needing me and dependent on me. Was I projecting my own
dependence onto them, I wondered. It gave me a sense that I was an independent
adult when I had some students dependent on me or when I found a psychological
problem that I could identify. Were we all frustrated mothers in the convent,
needing someone more dependent and helpless to rule over? Thoughts like
these tired and worried me. I was always analyzing and revising my way
of relating with people, always wary that I was too domineering, too possessive,
too controlling. I didn't want to come across as a bossy mother. I was
trying a new role --counsellor-helper. I wrote a lot in my journal about
listening to others, depending on and trusting them with responsibilities,
trying to bring them out, helping them, confronting them when they have
let me down, etc. Instead of encouraging students to join me in some fun
creative project, I was now drawing them into self-analysis, which was
destroying me! But both of these approaches reeked of control. I simply
wasn't able to relate like an adult without being in control, calling
the shots.

How
I rejected the community that rejected me

Added to that, I
could no longer respect or invest in religious community as run then.
It offered nothing but restraint and fear and powerlessness, not expansion
and growth. I no longer admired nuns. Since the superior had acquiesced
and let Father Kelley take my projects away from me, I felt we were powerless
women who let priests run our lives. I longed to participate in some meaningful
project that broke free of the limits of religious life. I had done this
with my forays into art and theater and debate and speech and films. I
always wanted a richer life than the bare minimum. Teaching only high
school English for the rest of my life didn't interest me, especially
without extracurricular activities, involving the larger community. Usually
I had generated those myself: at Noll we got into the Indiana High School
speech and debate meets; at Marian Central we had the film society with
outside teachers. There was no guarantee that our religious community
itself would afford this, and frequently superiors protested when I did. I lamented
that my religious community kept us cordoned off from the world and didn't
involve us in some adult level projects with lay people. I hated feeling
thrown back on the limited resources of the narrow specialized community
for support, without any larger input. I wrote to myself: "I want
to invest myself positively somewhere. The community keeps us cooped up
together, protected from a (they think) religiously hostile world, and
it bolsters our sense of Catholic identity and importance and divine origin
(and national too--ugh)." The community seemed so narrow; I didn't
want to belong to them, with their limited concepts. I didn't believe
in the overall project of a convent anymore, as a place where women were
protected from the world. Too often, nuns seemed like children, acted
and talked like children. I feared identifying with them, being limited
to everlasting childhood myself. "I've been acting like a child (it
was easiest to do that) when they were trying to make me be one for so
long, that I think I'm going to be phony, acting like a mature person
when I'm not sure I am one. " I thought the world looked more mature
and intelligent than the community. Nuns actually frightened me: "I
feel the same irrational fear of them that I felt when I was a child at
Clyde--a fear of mothering and dependency. . . There is an irrational
fear of nuns in me, because there is something irrational in them. Maybe
what depresses and scares me about them is that they seem to have no future,
no relevance." I sometimes felt as if I were in an asylum for the
mentally incompetent. There was nothing solid to their fun, no center,
no seriousness of purpose to their lives.

I was rejecting
the community. I didn't want to be shackled to something that to me seemed
dead. As my mood darkened, I tried to fight against it, to be a cheerleader
when I went out with the nuns: "When we're out together I try to
be helpful to them and to focus on them, but they're such dead souls.
How can I root for a lot of ghosts except in irony?" Being in a group
of dead souls threatened me; I identified with lively democratic people;
I feared the dead, feared isolation, feared the irrationality of power.
"Perhaps the reason I feel things are hopeless in the community and
in the church is the isolated, alienated lives we lead. In the Loyola
group I trusted the group's responsibility. But in the convent, with all
the responsibility vested in the top, we at the bottom lose hope and all
the decisions seem irrational." One of the irrational decisions I
feared was where I would be assigned. This nomadic life I had been living,
becoming attached to students and a school only to be uprooted, went against
my natural need for continuity and my loyalty to those I loved. "I
want a place--tenure--job security, plus good working conditions." Only this way could I retain some sense of myself in a swiftly moving
society. The impassive faces of the nuns I'd been with-did they not come
from not being allowed to invest themselves in a place and work for that
place for a long time? Only when sisters were old were they allowed to
semi-retire at a mission. Except for some like Sr. Edith and Sr. Scholastica
who read the newspaper, the sisters had nothing to talk about. I had been
engaged in an interpersonal experiment at a deeper level at Loyola, and
I longed for connection with people on a deeper level than we had in community,
where personal friendships were frowned upon and all the conversation
was on a general level.

My
Identity Crisis

Perhaps the worst
feeling was that I wasn't being given scope, wasn't being taken seriously,
wasn't being trusted with any responsibility, was being marginalized because
of who I was. Who was I? The artist? The people I liked and admired and
often identified with were the creative, odd, eccentric people, but the
community didn't understand these people. They were afraid of artists.
Since Father Kelley had complained about and "silenced" me,
the nuns in charge thought I was a loose cannon who would do wild things
[like have variety shows], make mistakes, get in trouble with the pastor,
so better not to give me any responsibilities outside the convent. I didn't
doubt that I had made mistakes, but it bothered me that I wasn't allowed
to make them. "The community is working with only three fingers,
and if I won't be one of those, I don't fit in. The organism (community)
is at such a primitive stage of development that it can't use these extras
that I bring [art fairs, variety shows, film festivals].. . . I'm on the
lunatic fringe. I'm not working at the things they take so seriously;
I believe in other things. I look at the nuns and I'm revolted and have
no confidence in them and feel more confidence in myself than in them." I saw myself as a sort of rebel, a non-conformist. In the Sixties, non-conformity
was in, of course, but not in the convent. I began to doubt and distrust
myself. I felt like I'd joined the mental patients. What could I do?

Another obstacle
to taking myself seriously was the religious habit which we still wore.
There had been much discussion within our community about modernization,
which devolved down to a debate on whether to modernize the habit, as
if that were the only thing that was needed reform. One whole summer of
discussions passed without a decision on that topic. I felt my identity
so limited by the habit that whenever I acted in any capacity but nun,
I felt like I was posing--"Sister posing as a director," "Sister
posing as a film critic," "Sister posing as a therapist."
Who would take me seriously? "People wouldn't expect me to be doing
this (running a film society). They would regard me as an elementary school
teacher on a holiday, or as an eccentric (like Maria Concepta) but wouldn't
take me seriously. The fact that women in the world were breaking out of their traditional roles totally bypassed nuns. People expect
women to free-lance at other projects now, but not nuns."

In the language
of the time, I was "having an identity crisis." Who was I? I
felt that everything that I wanted to be identified with had been taken
away from me. I was left with "being a nun." In the language
group, especially, I felt vulnerable. I didn't know whether to let them
laugh at me (as a silly naive nun who didn't know any better). I couldn't
get angry with them; I wanted to be their friend. So I became angry at
my surrogate mother, the community: "I can't stand the nun situation," I wrote
in my Loyola journal. "I feel angry at the order for dressing me
up so funny that everybody laughs at me. 'My mommy dresses me funny so
everybody'll know I'm hers--her little girl. Her little angel. I feel
like she deliberately set out to make me a spectacle of ridicule. I'm
blaming my mother when everyone laughs at me. My mother dresses me funny." There was no core of myself that I could recognize and feel good about.
I was not known or understood by others, not even by myself.

Worst of all, I
felt my talents weren't being used. "This would have been a perfect
role for her, but she never had the opportunity to sing it." Hearing
these words about a famous soprano broke my heart. I felt that I never
had the opportunity to sing the part I was best suited for. What I was
good at was not being allowed to develop; whereas what I was poor at was
being tested constantly. "This life puts all the burden on my weakest
side--social adaptability and social responsibility --without giving me
any options. My strong side--my task orientation--is the side of myself
that nothing is asked of. There are no options."

How
a dead end turned into a corner

All sorts of scales
were dropping from my eyes that summer of 1966, inspired by that psychology
course at Loyola. I was spending the summer in Hammond, where I could
commute to the language course at Loyola, to keep in touch with Fr. Curran
and Fr. Tranel, with whom I was still having once-a-week chats. In one
of our talks, sitting in the lobby of Loyola's downtown campus, I mentioned
to him that looking back on that year at St. Joe's and looking ahead only
to more of the same, I felt there was nothing on the horizon for me, nothing
to look forward to. I didn't look forward to going back to St. Joseph's
and Sr. Robertina and no involvement with the students. I didn't say it
but I felt like I was at a dead end. I was limited to being a high school
teacher; I could forsee no further development of my career. I yearned for something
to look forward to, something coming on the horizon. Fr. Tranel picked up on my pain and reflected back to me: "It
sounds like you feel you're getting a diminishing return on your investment." Eureka! That's it! His saying that liberated and unblocked me. There was
an option, a door to the future, although a drastic one. I could leave
the community.

I faced the fact
that I was having to put everything into my life that I wanted, that I
was having to nourish and condition myself psychologically to offset what
they were doing to me, that I was being damaged rather than nourished
in the convent. I was drying up emotionally. I was suffering from insufficient
stimulation. There was nothing to live for. "They're putting you
in a position where you can't do any harm," he reflected back to
me. Was that what I wanted? To be protected against doing any harm? I
felt as if I had been defined as a liability. I might as well be dead.
I felt that I was in a graveyard of dead souls. "In the graveyard
(of the convent), I want to recreate myself, but if they won't let me
do it, then they're destroying me. I'm in the graveyard and we're all
sitting around dead, and they're pouring more dirt on my head. I can either
stay and be a little girl forever, being led around, or I can be mature
and responsible for my decisions, direct my own investment." It wasn't
so much that I didn't like religious life; I didn't like what being a
nun had turned out to be in my life. I wanted to be in the mainstream,
to compete without the protective barrier of the habit, to get rid of
the games I played because of the habit. "I want to know the two
legs on which I stand, my own or the nun's." Father Tranel gave me
the courage to stand on my own two legs. I was thirty-five. If I waited
much longer, it would be too late to start a new career.

Who
should I be? How I cast about for my new identity

What could I do to
take myself seriously? Many pages of my journal from the summer of 1966
were devoted to searching for what path I might want to follow. I looked
back over the various kinds of projects I liked and had participated in--film
societies, plays, variety shows, art fairs, yearbooks--in an effort to
discern what I wanted to invest myself in. The accidental way that I found
my path, stumbling along through offhand observations, astonishes me as
I reread these pages. The community wasn't challenging me, wasn't giving
me anything to do which I took seriously. "I want to do some adult
work which will make me independent and which I and others will take seriously."
I thought about film-making. Film included so many things I loved--drama,
photography, design, imitation ("the liveliest art"). The film
course I had at ND, the film societies I had been in or led, my photography
interests-film was where I was heading. I actually called up some film
studios in the Chicago area while at Loyola for my class, to find out
if I could get a job with them, to no avail. I had no standing with them.
What references had I? Who would take me seriously? Without the protective
garb of the nun, who was I? The determination to get some new identity
to suit myself forced me on.

What affiliation
should I give when applying for a job? Not the convent, definitely. The
psych department at Loyola? That was flimsy. " Maybe I'd better go
to school a year and affiliate with a name school so I can claim an affiliation
honestly." The thought of connecting with a university turned on
my typical energy for beginning projects. I imagined myself launching
a new career in psychology, starting with a master's degree. I would study
anxiety or angst. I always liked to develop projects, so I poured into
my journals ideas for research projects that I could work on in the counselling
field. "Research on existential experiences of angst and counseling
remedies" was the title of one such project: Experiences were to
be drawn from literature, art, films, biblical experiences, with insights
from the literature on counseling and Thomism. Applications of the counseling
remedies would be given for the fields of learning, business and marriage.
Later I abridged this: "The area where I'm going to specialize is
the expression of angst or fear in art and literature, and the removal
of angst by prudence, counsel, etc."

Seeking graduate
student affiliation, I called IIT and asked for an application. My journal
has all the phone numbers I called and the names of people I talked to
and information I received. Giving my "secular name" for the
first time in years was the first step to my new identity. I was embarking
on my own personal quest. Emboldened by my success in talking to Mr. Jenny,
head of counseling psychology at IIT, I called the University of Chicago,
still looking for someone who would be interested in my research project
of angst in art and literature and counseling. At the U of C I talked
to Ernie Newland at 333-2606, then to Dr. Merle Ohlson at 333-2550. While
I was talking to them, I asked for literature about the PhD in English,
as an afterthought. Counseling was what I was really interested in then,
but English was easy. My practical nature immediately seized upon that
option. I went over in my mind the advantages and disadvantages of doing
the PhD in English, with not too much enthusiasm. "I 'll just have
more of the same discipline as I have now, but I'll have gotten shored
up again in English. I'll be specializing but can stay open. I can get
a better job with a PhD in the fall, at a university. I won't have to
take all the science courses I would in a behavioral science program.
I can start looking for the values in literature; however, I can't do
professional counseling. But I can see how courses are taught there, and
maybe I could teach there?" I listed my main priorities "1)
independence--to be selp-supporting, self-respecting, responsible for
myself; 2) Chicago--where Father Curran and the counseling group are"--I
was going to continue hanging onto them, and finally-"3) real work. "

The
Ouija Board Method

What would supply
all those things to me-independence, self-respect, support, responsibility,
Chicago, work? One mystery of my life is how I find my path, not by dreaming
of it, but by recognizing it when it appears, like letters on the Ouija
board or the writing on the wall. Without having ever had one thought
or desire to go to the U of C, suddenly it offered the solution to everything
in a very practical way. This was the easiest path. I already had an MA
in English, I could probably get into the U of C; that would give me standing
and affiliation, a base in Chicago. In writing in my journal these words,
in red-letter, staccato sentences: "I could stay in Chicago and go
to the U. of Chicago in English," I stumbled onto my path. I was
just being practical.
Once I set a course, I head straight for it and don't look back. I wanted
to combine English with psychology. "Go to U. of Chicago tomorrow....
I think I need to experiment right away in Chicago though, while I think
of it...If I'm going to be self-invested in English, I ought to start
or study it.... I don't want a full time job, but I do want a job."
Perhaps the great drive that carried me through graduate school, into
a university teaching career, with all sorts of side forays into art,
writing, travel, etc., came as an explosion of energy resulting from my
being blocked in my task-seeking in the community. Perhaps this red-letter
discovery was the first burst of energy that rewarded me for shooting
through that door Father Tranel opened for me in that summer of my transformation.

August,
1966

Once I had made up
my mind and had a destination, I made an apointment with Mother Verda
Clare and went to South Bend during July. As I was talking to her, telling her
of how I felt, she remained passive, totally unresponsive. It was like talking to a blank wall. I told her about my interest
in counseling and my desire to develop a research and learning project,
but she didn't take it seriously. At that time we were only teachers or
nurses; we didn't carve out careers in fields that interested us. I was
a math and English teacher, as far as she could see; what was I talking
about counseling for? We didn't have a need for "counseling."
As I talked and she sat there in silence, my words seemed to be falling
into a well. I pushed on to say that if my life couldn't change within
the community, I would have to leave. Perhaps I was hoping she would respond,
"Well, dear, why don't you take a year off, go and take the counseling
program at IIT, and come see me next year." No luck. She gave me
no hope. "So I guess I'll have to leave," I said, my voice falling
into the grave. I had backed myself out the door, and she hadn't stopped
me. All she said was "You must go and see Mother Kathryn Marie and ask her permission
to leave." After 14 years, no effort to keep me. And, as always, I would have to ask permission. So I made
an appointment with Mother Kathyn Marie, who had been the dean while I
was at St. Mary's. She was more upbeat than Mother Verda Clare. She didn't
offer me anything, but at least she had some spirit and gave me some of
hers. I didn't feel like it was the end of the world after talking to
her. She told me to write a letter to her giving my reasons. Back at Noll
on July 29, I wrote this letter, covering over all my emotions with a
flood of self-analyses that she must have thought was crazy. I had to
back up my request to leave with authority figures, so that she would
see I wasn't leaving just on my own capricious motivation, but under guidance.

Dear
Mother,
Since I talked with you Wednesday I have had several more talks--with
Sr. Alma Clare [our superior at Noll] and with Father Tranel. I tried
to see Father Curran, but he said he has been refusing everyone who has
asked him this summer, because he is too busy. I feel satisfied without
talking to him, however; Sister and Father have helped me clarify my feelings.
As I see myself now, I have been consciously desiring independence in
order to be able to respect myself, yet unconsciously desiring dependence.
This conflict has expressed itself in a "reaction formation" in my behavior so that I held back from participating and investing myself;
I became a loner, standing by unless invited.
In order to overcome this reluctance to commit myself to the project,
a powerful force in myself moving me to the good of the project itself
is necessary--an otional response of love or desire for some suitable
good. [Aristotle's Ethics, no doubt.] I do not feel this toward the general
projects of the community. I desire to help others, but I don't believe
in traditional Catholic education. I believe in experiments, but I understand
that the nature and extent of the community's commitments at present limits
this and leaves it to others. [Note: not me]
In order to turn aside from my self-defeating direction in the community,
I am asking for a dispensation from my vows. I value very highly the training
I have received and the rich companionship and closeness to the source
of new thought which we have enjoyed. I feel guilty in leaving because
I think I have been a dependent and used the community for my dependency
needs. [I hadn't realized that the community had been using me, without
any recompense, for 14 years.]
At present I am looking for a project which will apper to me as a 'suitable
good."
I have several ideas [really just two: MS in Counseling at IIT or PhD
in English at U of C] all of which may prove impractical but the long-range
goal of self-investment and independence appeals to me.
Sister Joseph Frances

This is the only
outer document I have from that summer. In it I sound like the therapist
treating Sr. Joseph Frances, and diagnosing her problems and recommending
that she leave as part of her treatment. I was not the nun Joseph who
was torn by confusion and pain. This detached role allowed me to retain
control and distance myself from Sr. Joseph Frances and the bad things
she was doing (having bad feelings and wanting to leave). I was standing
behind her, helping her. While she was misbehaving, I was "keeping
up appearances." My cool scientific exterior masked a painful interior,
too terrible to allow myself to get close to. In my journals however,
I was still digging up my fears and insecurities. On the very day I wrote
that self-possessed letter, my journal about the class held earlier that
Friday revealed self-distrust: "If I haven't any direction myself,
then I can't imagine anyone else can, so I take always a negative direction.
I've trapped myself in a negative direction. I've seen everything as an
attack on myself and defended myself against it."

I called my parents to tell them I was leaving. They must have wondered
when I called, for I always wrote to them, never called, and my letters
were always cheery, covering up my pain. My father wept, and my mother
had to convince him that it was a good thing. Fr. Lakas, a Jesuit at Rockhurst
College, talked to them and reassured them that it would be good. He was
a friend of my brother Joe and understood human needs above the needs
of religious communities. Eventually my father got to the point where
he felt sorry for nuns when he saw them (to think that they were losing
ME).

Bold,
Fearless, and Clinging: how I struggled for independence

I applied
at IIT and at the University of Chicago; fortunately their fall quarter
didn't begin until October and they were still accepting admissions. I still
had a big question whether going on for graduate work was really what I
was looking for. Perhaps I should get a job? "Will this meet my needs
for status or recognition, response, new experience, security, independence,
financial independence? I would respect myself more if I got a job; otherwise
I'll be putting off becoming responsible for a year." I was seeking
independence, yet I was still clinging to the group at Loyola in August,
still going to classes, for security, to hang onto something familiar. I
was especially clinging to Fr. Tranel, depending on his good opinion, looking
at him as a bridge figure, the only one from my old life who knew about
and approved my choice.

I was totally confused about dependence and independence. I was stepping
out into independence, but I was really very insecure and dependent. I needed
shoring up. Dependence was the strong undercurrent pulling me down underneath
the surface of my independence. I covered my dependence with aggression
and showy independence and I said whatever I felt like. I had many questions
about Fr. Tranel. Would I see him after I left? I still needed a helping
relationship. "Am I going to find someone else to listen to me now?
All I need is a listening ear. I can walk as long as I know someone is there
listening. He doesn't have to be the one helping me." I was leaving
to become an adult, yet I still felt like a child, looking for a caring
adult to look after her. "Am I going to the U. of Chicago to find nother
adult to depend on?"

Every step of the way was a tentative step toward independence. I was leaving
the community and I needed a place to live. One page of my journal is marked "Apartments." I knew nothing of Hyde Park addresses in those days
and wanted to be around the Midway. Now that I have lived in the Hyde Park
area for thirty years, those hit-or-miss lists amaze me. I certainly wouldn't
want to live at the addresses in Woodlawn ; in fact, of all the places I
have listed, only the Cloisters is a desirable address.

Self
Doubt

"Right now I'm
panicking because I m so insecure and haven't heard yet from the U. of
Chicago. I feel sure they'll reject me. (At the same I feel sure they'll
be glad to have me.)" I was having my doubts that I even wanted to
go back to grad school; I thought about applying for a job teaching in
Miege High School in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, near my parents' home. "I
don't want to have plenty of time to study; I want to work." I had
remorse about people I would be letting down by leaving. I felt guilty
about promising people things: "I find it hard to let people depend
on me. I can promise more than I can produce." I had to reassure
myself by reading Aristotle and "the higher good" : "All
I know for sure now is that I am searching for something good in my life--not
just a continuation of my former dependency needs." My sensitive
appetite was grieving over all the the lesser goods I would be giving
up, all the pleasures of trips with students and friends. I was cutting
off a whole world of friends that I had had for many years--nuns, students,
parents. I would just disappear into the night as soon as that summer
session ended. "All the old familiar particular goods I am letting
go, but can I? I am afraid. My soul is sorrowful in the presence of this
upheaval and uprooting. I don't need another year of study, especially
about theory, but I need to choose some particular goods which are means
to the end. I need responsibilities. I need to stop thinking about myself
and get involved in something with other people-e.g., in a learning experience.
I always want to do something different--art? Maybe it would be good for
a year just not to think." I thought that, after all the years of
denying my sensitive appetites, they were now rebelling, causing me grief
and sorrow. And I couldn't escape into activity, for I was incarcerated
at the Provincial House in South Bend, waiting for my dispensation.

How
I left with my tail between my legs

In those days when
nuns were still in their habits, we had to wait until a dispensation from
our vows came from Rome, which took several weeks. While at the Provincial
House I felt extremely depressed as I went to services and meals with
the other nuns. They all knew why I was there, waiting to leave. I felt
I had no common goal with them. That bond had been broken. I was like
a woman still living at home with her husband while waiting for her divorce.
The nuns staying at the Provincial House were often ones with problems-mental
problems, transitions. To me they seemed coddled. "Instead of coddling
our ill and disturbed, we should be turning outward and assuming that
everyone here can keep up the pace," I wrote. "We have coddled
our idiocyncracies too long. I want someone to say 'Get to work, Joseph;
your problems are blocking us from making progress.. . . Why limp along
with the group in lock-step when you can see the goal is to get lined
up with lay people and help others?'" The nuns were caught up in
the usual transitory affairs of daily life in convents, all the minutiae
which I could no longer even try to take an interest in. I was unable
to talk to them. No one was concerned with what I was doing; I no longer
counted. For one who always wanted to be "in," alienation was
very painful. "Around the nuns I have a feeling that I am not a person;
I feel passed by all the time. Only when I feel myself operating do I
know I'm there."

I called the U. of
Chicago graduate admissions office to ask what my chances of being admitted
were. The admissions secretary said that my application looked strong,
that someone had circled the courses in Greek on my transcripts. She buoyed
my spirits; she was from the outside world and to her my application looked
strong. "I depend on people like the woman in the admissions office
to understand. I feel like I present myself to them and they accept me
as an adult." In my desperation, I made notes to myself: "Call
K.U. and apply." I had the phone numbers of the graduate school and
the English department written in firm red.

That August was
scorching, as I stayed in the basement of the provincial house making
an outfit to wear in the outer world. I made a skirt and blouse, size
16, not realizing that I had lost weight and was down to a 14 or even
12. The superior was Sr. John Vincent, but I felt sorry for her. She was
for me a final example of what could happen to me. She was --"frustrated,
with nothing meaningful to do yet trying to show her love by doing everything,
and miserable because there's no response."

When the dispensation finally came, I called my parents who drove up to
get me. My 69 year old father and 62 year old mother drove in the heat
of August and loaded my trunk into the trunk of their car. The night before
I left, the chaplain, an ancient priest, read me my dispensation, concluding
with these words of his own: "And if, by some chance, you should
happen to save your soul, it will only be because of the years you have
spent as a sister of Holy Cross." Those were the last words for me
from my community. No goodbyes were exchanged. I felt I was leaving in
disgrace, with my tail between my legs. The ones I wanted to say goodbye
to were not the ones who stayed at the Provincial House. My best friend
Dorothy was in France, and had called me in disbelief when she heard the
news. (She left several years later.)

The next morning
we drove away from the convent, I in the new outfit I had made, taking
my trunk and the $200 that was returned to me-- my "dowry." As we were leaving, I felt numb. There was nothing positive to look forward
to. I didn't know where I was going, having heard from neither IIT or
the University of Chicago. But a great rock was lifted from my heart.
At last all the painful burden was removed. I felt free.

Counting
my blessings

When I left the convent that
August with $200 and a feeling of numbness, I didn't know it but I took
many intangible benefits with me. All the self-exploration of that tormented
summer afforded me guideposts for my future life. That pent-up frustration
of my creative energies afforded a burst of energy with which I left the
convent (negative though much of it was) that carrried well into my post
convent life. Although I would specialize in English, I would put into
my life all the other things I wanted--art, films, theatre, music, even
counseling. I would prove that I was doing the right thing. Oddly enough,
another blessing was that I wasn't married at 35. When I was choosing,
I didn't have to follow a man's choice-I could have it all. No one was
stopping me, or questioning me. In fact, in my family, as I saw, my brother
was trying to have it all.

As I reflect back now on my
fourteen years in the convent and how they influenced the years that followed,
I see that I personally benefitted in many ways from the experience. When
I see young people today waiting for just the perfect job or career, postponing
making that big step even into their thirties, I must admit that it was
good that at 24 I was simply sent into classrooms with 40 students and
told to begin teaching, even when I wasn't prepared; the students were
my responsibility. I had to step up to the plate and teach them algebra
or English or bookkeeping, without making any excuses or asking for any
delays. Now I do not dither and have no patience with dithering; when
I have to do something, I get to it, and wonder when others cannot get
started.

Also congenial was the scheduled life. Our whole life was regulated by
bells, starting with the rising bell at 5:30, summoning us to Matins,
Lauds, then meditation and Mass before the 7 a.m. breakfast bell, in order
to be in the classroom by 7:45 in order to preside over the students as
they arrived between 8:00 and 8:30 school bells-all that regulated life
laid down a deep discipline and regularity in me, to which I was no doubt
disposed, as I know others who left and immediately adjusted to sleeping
in. I am an early riser to this day. A recurring dream that I had years
after I left the convent was one in which I still wore the habit, though
I knew I was no longer a nun. I was happy knowing I could step out of
it at any time, so I continued wearing it. I couldn't figure out why I
had that dream, but now I believe it was that the disciplined life was
so congenial, I was still observing it.

I also enjoyed the sense of accomplishment in fitting so much into one
day-all that I had to do and all that I wanted to do on the side. Doing
spiritual practices, teaching 5 classes, meeting with students after school
to work on yearbook or newspaper, coming home in time for Vespers, spiritual
reading, dinner and "community hour," preparing for classes
the next day, and besides that preparing for a debate or speech contest
or rehearsing for a play, I had the energy for it all. I went into overdrive
and thrived. I loved to be busy, to see the product of my efforts, to
see the students enjoying themselves and being productive. All my problems
with the community began when I was deprived of extra work and projects.
People now ask me where I get the energy to do all I do. If they could
have seen me then, they wouldn't ask.

Best of all was the pleasure
I got out of discovering and bringing out hidden talent in students. Because
I had always been aware of and had had to fight for my individuality,
I could recognize the individuality in others and reach out to individuals.
I could recognize what someone might be good at and I wanted them to have
the chance to develop. Each class presented me with 40 students, aged
14 through 18, whom I had to get to know quickly. I was eager to know
their names, to get to know them as individuals, to size up their readiness,
to see what I could do with them, so to speak. I recognized which students
were looking for something else and which were content on their own planets.
I could sense what motivated them-usually the desire to feel part of the
action. I could provide the action and invite them to join in. Once I
knew everybody, I could give each something special to do, relating to
that person's special interest. A good reader would become the narrator.
One with a comic turn would get a comic part. I was definitely into giving
individual attention. I would create an atmosphere of group participation
in which everyone could shine. This was my ideal classroom

And how fortunate I
was to have taught in Catholic schools, where there were parents at home
and a nun in school-laying down the law. When I was in graduate school
and substituted in the Chicago public schools for extra money, I wondered
how any teaching could get done.

A
downside

I had become more
pessimistic and self-doubting after this struggle. My convent experience
had made me see indifference everywhere. I readily understood and internalized
the feelings of those who lived under oppressive regimes that cared nothing
for their subjects (e.g. The Gulag Archipelago). I expected indifference
to my efforts; if I asked for some help or concession, I was prepared
for nothing. This negative expectation has plagued my life; it has also
made me skeptical--which can be good. Fortunately I didn't feel this way
with students or with creative people in general, whom I felt free to
ask anything.

With encouragement,
I might have grown old as a nun teaching high school students like those
I had had. But even had I not left the convent then, I would have left a
few years later, when the general exodus from religious communities began
in earnest. Within ten years, the nuns were out of their habits, living
on their own or in small communities without a superior, practicing ministries
undreamt of by our superiors' philosophy. I had anticipated the life that
they would be living. I seemed to sense that, at thirty-five, the moment
for me to leave had arrived-when I was still young enough to begin a new
career. But what would that career be?